No republic bill is before Parliament as members return on Tuesday, and passing one would take most of a year before voters could weigh in.

The Constitution (Amendment) (Republic) Bill, 2024 was tabled in December 2024 but lapsed when Parliament was dissolved before the September 2025 election. Nothing has replaced it, although the Governor General listed republic reform among the Government’s priorities in this year’s Throne Speech.

The path is laid out in Section 49 of the Constitution. Former Legal and Constitutional Affairs Minister Marlene Malahoo Forte summarised it for the House in December 2024. After a bill is tabled, three months must go by before its full text can be debated in the House, and another three months after that debate before the House may pass it.

Both chambers then need votes from at least two-thirds of their total membership. A referendum follows, held two to six months after the second chamber signs off, and a majority of those voting decides the outcome. Jamaica has never put a question to a referendum since independence in 1962, she noted.

Counting those waiting periods, a bill tabled now could not reach voters before roughly mid-2027. The next general election is due in 2030, so time alone is not the main constraint.

The votes are. The Government holds 35 of the 63 seats in the House and 13 of the 21 in the Senate. Two-thirds means 42 and 14, so it needs Opposition members in both chambers.

Those votes are tied to a dispute over the final court. Opposition Leader Mark Golding said in May that the People’s National Party will not back a republic that still sends final appeals to the Privy Council in London. The party wants Jamaica to adopt the Caribbean Court of Justice at the same time as a Jamaican head of state, and Mr Golding restated that position in August. The Opposition also pulled out of the joint select committee that was reviewing the bill in the last term.

Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Delroy Chuck wants the sequence reversed. He has said the Government could create the republic first, then turn to the question of a final court, which he said might end up being the CCJ, and table a new bill once Mr Golding agrees. Mr Chuck conceded in May that little can happen on the republic bill until the two parties settle on an approach, and on June 10 he urged the House to take another look at the 2024 bill and amend it if needed.

Both leaders see room elsewhere.  Chuck said his ministry is studying recommendations from the Constitutional Reform Committee, among them writing the Electoral Commission of Jamaica and the Office of the Public Defender into the Constitution. Mr Golding pointed to fixed election dates, recall of MPs and impeachment procedures as changes that need not wait.

Golding asked for talks with Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who referred him to Chuck, and Golding said that would achieve nothing. As of May, no talks had resumed. Without agreement on the court question, the Government cannot pass a new bill with its own votes alone.